NEPOTISM BABY [TYLER OWENS]

ONE : A STORM IS A MEMORY

CHAPTER ONE: A STORM IS A MEMORY

BILL TELLS HER ON THEIR DAILY EVENING PHONE CALL THEY ARE HITTING THEIR LAST CHASE OF THE SEASON.

He is a worry-wart during the season, expecting a check-in at least nightly. Though, he spends more time coaching her how to get closer to the storms he worries will take her off the map than asking her to stay indoors for once. Willow, for all his influence, has ended up more like Jo, who rather send herself to the center of the worst cell if it meant getting the data they needed.

Willow trusts his word as if it is the word of god. His list of honorifics is long, but her personal favorite had always been 'the human barometer', and if he says they have their last chase of the season ahead of them, it is the last chase. She makes the executive decision to camp rather than sneak all six of them into a single motel room again. There is no time to waste- they have to roll out the moment the storm arrives.

Kate is all aboard; Javi fell asleep in the Oklahoma dirt cursing their existence.

Willow, herself, cannot sleep any longer than she already has. She gets a mere four hours in the back of the van, curled up next to Addy under one unzipped sleeping bag because Praveen forgot his at the last motel and Addy is bleeding heart. She uncurls herself finally two hours before dawn- moving to the front seat of the van with her doppler radar open and munching on a protein bar. There is a storm moving in from the west that should develop into the conditions they need by time it reaches four miles southwest.

And they need it. There is too much at stake if this storm does not arrive as it should. All of their work for the season, all of the planning and chasing, will have been for naught.

A therapist would certainly call it unhealthy with the way she constantly measures herself up to her family before her. It is a demanding dream to attempt to fill the shoes of her storm-chasing aunt and uncle and walk even further in them. The DOROTHY team of 1996 made history with their ability to read the funnel structure and temperatures from inside the funnel, saving lives with their extended warning system. 

Willow thinks their team is set to do the same. She thinks of each of the rag-tag DOROTHY team and aligns them with her own. All of the conditions are set with each player on the board to change the game. Willow deems herself Jo without a doubt in her mind. She goes back and forth comparing Javi to Betlzer and Jeb to Rabbit, while Addy is certainly their Dusty and Praveen their Joey.

Kate Carter, though, is a wild card. There is nothing in the world that told her to seek out Kate and recruit her to the storm chasing cause. Nothing truly tells her to sit down next to the dark-haired girl in what may have been the toughest sounding physics lab she would ever face and make friends.